- Author, Editorial team
- Role, BBC News Mundo*
Sheikh Hasina’s time leading the government of Bangladesh has come to an end.
The Prime Minister, in office since January 2009, resigned at noon on Monday (local time) and fled to neighboring India in a military helicopter, reported the Bengali service of the BBC.
The resignation of the leader comes as a result of the popular uprising that has arisen from the wave of protests that erupted last July, which has been led by young students, who demanded the repeal of a law that set quotas for assigning jobs in the Public Administration.
The protests have been harshly repressed by the police authorities and have thus far left at least 300 dead, of which 90 were recorded just this past Sunday, according to the AFP agency.
Even after Hasina’s departure, scenes of vandalism and theft were reported across the country. Moments after the military helicopter carrying the now former Prime Minister was seen departing, a mob entered the official residence to vandalize it, according to witnesses on the scene.
Protesters also entered the Bangabandhu Museum in the capital, Dhaka, and set it on fire.
With politics in the veins
Born into a Muslim family in East Bengal in 1947, Sheikh Hasina had politics in her blood.
Her father was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who is considered the “Father of the Nation”, as he led the country’s independence from Pakistan in 1971 and became its first president of the new state.
By that time, the now former leader had already earned a reputation as a student leader at the University of Dhaka.
In 1975, her father was murdered along with most of his family during a military coup. Only she and her younger sister survived, as they were abroad at the time.
After living in exile in India, Sheikh Hasina returned to Bangladesh in 1981 and became the leader of the political party to which her father belonged, the Awami League.
The leader joined other political leaders and led street protests in favor of democracy during the military government, thus becoming an icon of democracy internally.
In 1996 she was elected Prime Minister for the first time and gained a reputation as a stateswoman by signing a water-sharing agreement with neighboring India and a peace agreement with tribal insurgents in the southeastern part of the country.
However, her closeness with the government of New Delhi served her rivals to attack her and in 2001 she lost the general elections to a former ally now turned nemesis, Begum Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
However, in 2009 she regained power through the ballot box.
Under her leadership, Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country that was once one of the poorest in the world, has achieved remarkable economic success and is now one of the fastest-growing economies in the region, even surpassing its giant neighbor India.
The per capita income of the country of 170 million inhabitants has tripled in the last decade and the World Bank estimates that over 25 million people have escaped poverty in the last 20 years.
Much of this prosperity has been driven by the garment industry, which represents the majority of Bangladesh’s total exports.
However, the former leader has also been criticized for mismanagement and for using her position to cling to power, while being accused of political intolerance, as she has labeled her rivals as “enemies” and even “terrorists”.
Against the symbols of power
As soon as the news of Sheikh Hasina’s escape broke, celebrations erupted among the thousands of protesters who had been on the streets of Dhaka since the early hours of the morning, preparing for another day of protests.
However, some went further and charged the Ganabhaban palace, the residence and official office of the country’s prime ministers.
Videos circulated on social media showed people roaming inside the government headquarters chanting slogans, while others were seen taking objects, including some furniture and even kitchen utensils.
No one has escaped the wrath of the protesters, not even the father of the former leader.
The BBC reported that a statue honoring the deceased leader, located in the capital, was toppled by a group of people.
The causes of the crisis
The protests, which have lasted since early July, began as peaceful demands from university students to abolish a law that established quotas for jobs in the public administration.
The instrument reserved a third of the positions for relatives of veterans of the 1971 independence war.
Protesters argued that the system was discriminatory and needed reform.
Around 18 million young Bangladeshis are looking for work.
University graduates face higher unemployment rates than their less-educated peers, and that is why they opposed the limits for gaining public jobs.
And although the students’ demands were largely addressed, the repression of the protests transformed them into a broader anti-government movement.
“It was no longer just the students, people from all walks of life joined the movement,” explained Dr. Samina Luthfa, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Dhaka, to the BBC.
About the future
In a televised address to the nation, the army commander, General Waker-uz-Zaman, announced the formation of an “interim government”.
The military announced that he would meet with the country’s president, Mohammed Shahabuddin, in order to find the person who would take the reins of the executive before the end of the day.
So far, the names of possible successors to Sheikh Hasina, who ruled Bangladesh with an iron fist for more than two decades, are unknown.
Regarding the future of the former leader, her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, assured the BBC that she would retire from politics for good.
“She is very disappointed that, after all her hard work, a minority has risen against her,” he stated on the program Newshour.
Joy, who until today was one of her advisors, defended his mother’s legacy.
“She turned Bangladesh around. When she took power, this country was considered a failed state. It was a poor country and is now considered one of Asia’s rising tigers,” he added.
Joy rejected the accusations that the government had committed abuses against the protesters.
“There have been police beaten to death, 13 just yesterday. What do you expect the police to do when mobs are beating them to death?“, he inquired.
However, most of the hundreds of deaths in the protests are protesters.
*With information from Anbarasan Ethirajan, Anbarasan Ethirajan, and Tessa Wong
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